


Regarding the Pandemic

by BleedingTypewriter



Series: Regarding Twitter (NSFW) [13]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Adam is the ultimate sass master, Friends to Lovers, Friends to Pre-Boyfriends to Lovers, Getting Together, M/M, No one can handle Keith and Lance long term except for Keith and Lance, Quarantine, Remote dating, Shiro and Adam are Hus-bros, Webcam/Video Chat Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-14
Updated: 2020-05-14
Packaged: 2021-03-02 21:47:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,795
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24173845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BleedingTypewriter/pseuds/BleedingTypewriter
Summary: Separating Keith and Lance during a pandemic ends up bringing them together. Go figure.Part of a series of edited/updated threads from Twitter.
Relationships: Keith/Lance (Voltron)
Series: Regarding Twitter (NSFW) [13]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1744681
Comments: 6
Kudos: 208





	Regarding the Pandemic

**Author's Note:**

> "Regarding Twitter" is a series of my favourite threads updated, lightly edited, and tagged. All original versions are available on my account [here.](https://twitter.com/BleedingType/status/1199399029395709952) Length and tone varies as Twitter is where I tend to play and explore.

“He needs to leave.”

Adam casually flips a page in his book. “Love, there’s a pandemic on.”

“He’s young. He’ll live.”

“That’s not how social distancing works and you know it.”

“The guilt of a few hundred deaths would be easier to handle than this.”

Adam places one slender finger on the page to mark his place and glances at his husband, slumped on the floor outside Keith’s locked bedroom door. He’s tipped his weight onto one hip, one side still clearly sore from his earlier “incident”. (For the record, he’d _told_ Takashi that sparring inside was a bad idea, no matter _how_ insufferable Keith was getting. Adam isn’t one for ‘I told you so,’ but he _had_ waited a spiteful three minutes to fetch the first aid kit after the inevitable _thump-crash-“AGH”_.)

“Just let him brood, Takashi,” Adam sighs.

Keith’s voice comes muffled from the other side of the door: “Yeah, _Takashi_. Let me brood.”

It’s cute the way Shiro bristles. Sitting on the floor like that, he looks like a particularly unimpressed bulldog. “I _would_ ,” Shiro gripes, “Except _someone_ has a _cosmic pet_ , and I am _not_ going on another wild goose chase.”

It’s a decent point. Keith’s sullen, “I’m not gonna do that again,” is not convincing.

Adam rolls his eyes and marks his book properly. “Honestly, Takashi,” he says, and opens the drawer in the coffee table. “You two are still _exactly alike_. Always point A to point B.” He retrieves a worn, somewhat chewed bag of treats. “No room for _creativity_.”

Two sharp whistles later and a quick flick of the wrist, and with an affronted yell from Keith and a blinding blue flash, Kosmo is sitting in the living room. He’s so big that his hind legs block the door. Adam can tell by the _whump-whump-whump_ and his husband’s sudden sputtering that his tail must be taking up most of the hallway. He gives him an extra treat when he hears Shiro’s desperate, “Ah, Kosmo, please, some _ass awareness_...!”

“Kosmo, come back here!” Keith shouts.

“See, why do you need Kosmo if you’re not going to run?” Shiro retorts.

“Because he’s _my dog_.”

“Then come out here and see him.”

“I don’t _want to_.”

Adam scratches Kosmo behind one huge blue ear as he leaves damp crumbs all over the hardwood between his paws. He’d expected it to be easier dealing with the Brogranes after several years of space bonding.

What an idealistic fool he’d been. “We should’ve taken Lance. Don’t you think, boy?” Kosmo licks at his fingers, though it’s probably more for the treat remnants than any sort of agreement. “I bet he and Hunk are having actual fun.”

\------ ------ ------

Hunk had thought this was going to be _fun_.

How could it not be? A month-long sleepover with his best buddy? Sign him up.

And to be fair, it _is_ fun, at first.

They stay up for thirty-six hours straight playing Killbot Phantasm and then crash for twelve. Hunk cooks until his hands go numb and they feast until they can’t move. They break out the Nerf guns and have an all-out battle that only ends when Hunk catches his shin on the coffee table and upends the couch. They talk for hours, and then hours more.

Then Lance talks _another_ few hours, and Hunk’s not going to lie, he sneaks in a nap or two.

He guiltily holds out his bruised thumbs when Lance tosses a controller his way for another round of Killbot Phantasm.

He’d _like_ to keep cooking, but they really only stockpiled enough for one good feast, and the rest needs to be rationed accordingly (a generous ration, but not enough to keep Hunk in the kitchen for more than a couple hours).

The bruise on his shin keeps Hunk from another Nerf war and, as bad as he feels about it, he’s just about ready to see how far a Q-Tip will sink into his ear canal because Lance will _not_ _stop_ _talking_.

In fact, Lance just doesn’t _stop_. He fidgets, rambles, paces from room to room. He pokes fun at Hunk until it stops being quite as funny. He disappears into immaculate spaces and emerges again with cacophonies of sound and mess in his wake.

Hunk _loves_ his best bud—he _does_ —but it’s a _lot_ to handle. As he runs through the apartment and throws open every window he can reach while Lance pokes frantically at their smoke detector (choking on the smoke from his attempt at indoor s’mores), Hunk thinks sullenly, ‘I should have taken Keith. I’m losing my mind.’

\------ ------ ------

“I’m losing my mind.”

Hunk and Shiro speak so closely together that, for a second, each of them fears their datapad is feeding their own audio back. Hunk realizes first: “ _You’re_ losing your mind?”

Shiro’s holding his datapad on his stomach, slumped and defeated. He doesn’t seem to care about the double chin it creates. He looks, Hunk has to admit, exhausted. “Might have spoken too late. I’ve lost it already, I think. This is the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do.”

Hunk balks. “You were a prisoner of war in galra fighting pits.”

“I stand by what I said.”

“They took your _arm_.”

“I’d rather they take the other one than deal with this another day.”

“ _Shiro._ ”

That has a little laughter showing through on the older man’s face. “Too far?”

From the other side of Hunk’s closed bedroom door there’s a crash he can’t identify, followed by what sounds like the yowling of a cat. He doesn’t have any pets.

“No,” he sighs, “No, that sounds about right to me. You, too, huh?”

In the doorway behind Shiro’s left shoulder, a massive blurry streak of blue goes whizzing by with Keith in hot pursuit. The sound of claw-on-hardwood is loud, even through the tinny mic. (So is Adam’s distant, “Keith, _please_. I can see _subfloor_.”)

Shiro pinches at the scar bridging his nose. “Me, too. And a half.”

The yowling gets louder; warbles in and out. He tugs his bandana down over his nose and groans. “How is this possible? We like them _so much_. We went to _space_ with them.”

“One of them is about to go to _back_ to space if he doesn’t,” Shiro grumbles and then finishes pointedly and loudly over his shoulder, “ _knock it off!_ ”

There’s a momentary silence, then a series of sharp cracks and the odd flash in the doorway. “Warp tag is not better!” Adam yells.

Abruptly, the yowling on the other side of Hunk’s wall becomes a yowling on this side of Hunk’s wall as Lance crashes through the door with his phone outstretched. “Hunk. _Hunk_. You have to check this out. If I play this video out the window I can lure like _four_ cats!”

Hunk breathes deep—imagines the air is a chocolate eclair so he inhales from the belly—and exhales slowly. He can do this. “Lance–”

“Keith! Kosmo! I swear to– _Jesus_!” The screen whites out. Shiro’s scolding is cut off as half his room is taken up by space wolf and Kogane.

“Really? I tend to swear to his dad,” Keith quips.

Hunk can _see_ a vein in Shiro’s temple swell and throb. “That’s _not_ –” he starts, but he’s cut off by Lance’s abrupt laughter. It stops as suddenly as it starts.

“Oh _ew_ ,” Lance groans. “ _Ewwww_. This isolation thing is really getting to me, I’m laughing at _Keith’s_ jokes.”

“What, have you been spending the time reading? Finally have an IQ high enough to _understand_ my jokes?” Keith snaps back.

“Oh no. _No_ , we’re not going through all this just to have you two fight anyway,” Shiro insists. “Out.”

Lance snorts. “ _Yeah_ , Keith. _Out_.”

Hunk sighs and pulls his bandana back up into place. “You, too, buddy.”

Keith snickers.

“Shut it, Mullet.”

“Ha, gonna come over here and–okay, _what_ is that noise?!”

The ensuing silence is eaten by the continued yowling from Lance’s phone. “I’m luring cats,” he explains. 

Keith leans over Shiro’s shoulder for a better look at the screen, pointedly ignoring his brother’s irritated shrug. “Luring...that’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.”

Lance pulls his phone in toward his chest protectively. “ _You’re_ the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.”

Keith tugs at Shiro’s wrist so he can see the screen clearer. “That doesn’t even make any sense. Besides, you can’t lure cats with a _video_.”

Lance does the same to Hunk. “Yes, you can.”

With an indignant huff, Shiro’s datapad is in Keith’s grip. “No, you can’t.”

Hunk disappears from view as Lance plucks his screen out of his hands. “You wanna bet?!”

There’s a flash of blue reflecting off Lance’s face that must mean Keith’s zapped out of Shiro’s room on the other end. “You’re _on_ , McClain,” he says. His voice is quiet, already disappearing down the hallway along with Lance’s phone’s yowling.

By the time Hunk finds his phone, there’s already a text from Shiro waiting for him:

‘...I think we miscalculated, here…’

\------ ------ ------

They definitely miscalculated, here.

\------ ------ ------

“Okay, fine,” Keith huffs. “You can lure cats with a stupid video.”

Lance’s “Ha!” is smug, and so is his grin, but they’re both a little soft, too, as he taps the window to try and goad one of the five gathered cats to play. It’s cute.

…

The cats. The cats are cute.

\------ ------ ------

It’s not until Shiro’s bleary-eyed face appears on-screen that Lance remembers that, oh yeah, it had been _his_ datapad, hadn’t it? Not Keith’s. “Uh,” he says.

“Lnss?” Shiro squints against the blue light of the screen.

Behind him, the blanket shifts. “Takashi, it’s _four AM_.”

Shiro’s eyes slip closed. “Lance, it’s four AM,” he mumbles.

“Is it?”

There’s a soft focus shuffling on the screen, and then Adam’s sharp, unamused stare, right into the camera. “What do you _want_?” To his right, Shiro starts to softly snore again, and he pokes him awake.

Lance shrinks back. “Is...is Keith there?” He flinches; uses the hand holding the phone to slap his own forehead so Adam must get a close-up, top-down view of Lance’s blush. God, he sounds like a kid begging his friend’s mom for a play date.

“It’s four in the morning during a pandemic, McClain. _Yes_ , Keith is here.”

An awkward, silent beat goes by. Adam nudges Shiro again and hisses, “I don’t sleep, you don’t sleep.”

“Can I talk to him?” Lance asks.

Another awkward, silent beat. Another nudge to Shiro’s side. “It’s _four_ –”

“–AM, I know,” Lance finishes. “I thought...he was always up at dumb times on the castle…maybe I should just…”

Adam sighs and pushes at his nose, even though his glasses aren’t there. “Keith!” he shouts. Shiro jumps so hard Lance can hear him conk _something_ on his nightstand with a curse. “Keith get up and get in here!”

The sound of the door opening follows quick and sharp. “What?” comes Keith’s prickly voice.

The screen becomes nothing but a dark ceiling as Adam shoves the datapad in Keith’s direction. “It’s for you.”

“What do you mean it’s for–Lance?” He holds the datapad by his hips, confused, so Lance is looking mostly up his nose.

The darker man gives a finger gun. “Yo.”

“Why are you calling at ass o’clock?”

Lance wrinkles his nose. “Ass o’clock? Who are you?”

“Shut up, that’s not an answer.”

“Yeah, well, that wasn’t a _question_. Ass o’clock isn’t a time.”

“Yes it is. It’s equivalent to a quarter past _what the hell, Lance_.”

“Kogane, you have point six seconds to get out of this room before I rip that hair off your head like the bad wig it’s trying to imitate,” Adam grits.

Lance guffaws so loud Hunk knocks on their shared bedroom wall. Adam isn’t impressed, either. “Do you want a turn, McClain?!”

He does, kinda, if only out of curiosity, but Keith leaves before Lance can voice that thought. (It’s probably for the best.)

He gets weird flashes of the Shirogane house as Keith goes back to his room: photos sliding past his stationary head. He thinks he sees himself in one.

He _definitely_ sees himself in one in the better light of Keith’s room. It’s visible behind him when he flops onto his bed: an unframed photo of the whole team in their Voltron kit, worn at the edges but not creased.

He grins and makes to comment on it, but something about those edges keeps his mouth shut. Something about the way it’s perched there with no protection like it’s not particularly important, and yet carefully within reach; clearly used but delicately kept.

Huh.

That’s…

Huh.

He can’t help it. His grin turns a little soft.

“Did you call at ass o’clock to stare at me?”

“Would that annoy you?”

“What do _you_ think?”

“Then maybe.”

Keith sighs. “Lance, seriously?”

“ _Okay_ , okay.”

He shimmies over to the window and flips to the datapad’s back-facing camera. “I just figured you’d be up,” he explains as he focuses as best he can on the cat curled up in the flower box, three kittens tucked in beside her. “She brought her babies!”

“You called me at four in the morning,” Keith says slowly, “To show me sleeping kittens?”

Okay, it sounds ridiculous when he says it like that. Rude. “Yes.”

“Because you knew I’d be up?”

“I mean, I figured. Plus I didn’t care about waking you up if you were sleeping, so.”

“Oh my god, look at their little paws.”

Keith doesn’t change tones when he says it, just states it flat and neutral, so it takes Lance a second to realize he’s not being grilled. “What now?”

“Their _paws_ ,” Keith repeats. “They’re twitching. They’re dreaming. Lance, _the kittens are dreaming_.”

He’s still just… _saying_ it. Lance, himself, is kind of wanting to choke on a whine that wants to come out (because _oh my god, the kittens are dreaming_ ), but Keith is just…

“That’s the cutest thing I’ve ever seen in my life.” Off camera, there’s a disgruntled snarf and Keith rolls his eyes. “Except for Kosmo,” he amends.

That’s...yeah. Lance has to agree. Cutest thing he’s ever seen.

…

The kittens.

“Hey, uh...thanks, Lance,” Keith says. His face is a little red, Lance thinks.

…

 _He’d meant the kittens_.

He gives the datapad a weak finger gun before he remembers he’s not on camera. “Yup.” He clears his throat. “No worries, Mullet.”

Keith’s lip twitches, but it’s probably because the smallest of the kittens has rolled over onto its back, round belly on display.

\------ ------ ------

“That’s not how that _works_ , Keith,” Lance says, bemused. “You can’t just wait for an animal to _tell you_ its name.”

Keith blinks into the camera. “It’s a cosmic wolf.”

“That’s not an explanation!” Lance throws up his hands. Most people don’t like video calling with Lance because he talks with his hands so much and forgets to keep the camera steady, but Keith never bats an eye at the blur. He tends to get distracted, anyway, and set the datapad down for minutes at a time, and Lance doesn’t mind that. He can hear Keith tinkering in the background when it happens, humming or snorting or snarkily commenting as Lance rambles about something-or-other, and the noise helps him focus; helps his motormouth stay at least a little on-track. 

“I dunno.” Keith shrugs. “I don’t like the idea of other people choosing who we are just by looking, I guess…even if he _is_ a dog.”

Lance leans back. That...makes sense. In the most Keith way possible. He hangs his head with an exasperated exhale to hide the fondness in his smile, but it’s still there when he looks up again. 

“Cosmic wolf,” he corrects.

Keith doesn’t put his screen down fast enough to hide the fact that _his_ smile isn’t without its fondness, either.

\------ ------ ------

Keith isn’t sure how he let Lance talk him into this. “This is so dumb,” he hisses for the umpteeth time, shimmying out his window and up onto the roof of Shiro and Adam’s house. “You are _so dumb_ , Lance.”

“Says the man climbing a lattice.”

Keith heaves himself up over the eavestrough. “You know what a lattice is?” he teases.

“I’ll punch _you_ in the lattice if you don’t shut up.”

Keith chuckles as he stands in the most brightly lit spot he can find on the roof. “I can’t believe I’m doing his,” he groans.

“Honestly, me, neither,” Lance agrees. “Shiro’s gonna be _maaaad_.”

“Right, right, _that’s_ why I’m doing this.”

Lance has to smother his own laughter in his jacket as he leans back against the apartment’s patio railing. “Okay, shut up, let’s go.” He takes a shoulder heaving breath and lets it out with a mousy, “Penis.”

Keith’s lips suck inward, and Lance finds he likes that look on him: trying to smother a laugh. So often he doesn’t have to _try_ to do that; he can be so _stoic_ when he wants. (Lance finds he especially likes that _he’s_ the one to make Keith happy despite himself like this.)

After a couple shrugged shoulders to loosen the tension, Keith takes his turn. “Penis,” he whispers, just a little louder than Lance. Back and forth they go, increasing in volume, “penis, penis, Penis, Penis, PENIS, PENIS,” until they’re screeching it in turns and collapsing into fits of laughter as their neighbours’ lights flicker in turn, trying to find the source of the noise.

Lance is right. Shiro is _maaaaad_. He’s so mad that they’re not allowed to video chat each other for _days_ , and Lance is starting to think the whole thing wasn’t worth it. But then Keith’s face appears on his screen again, and his grin is so easy and mischievous, and…

It feels worth it and then some.

(All of it—the pandemic itself, minus the death—is starting to feel worth it to Lance. Especially when Keith smiles like that.)

“I missed you, Mullet!” He tells himself the teasing tone is genuine; calls himself a liar, and knows it’s true.

\------ ------ ------

To be fair to them both, they’re a little drunk when it happens.

The knowledge that it’s more than a bad a idea—is a downright _weird_ idea—is a blurry, uninteresting, faraway thought. There are more fun things to talk about after a remotely shared bottle (or two) of wine.

“I wonder how many nudes will be sent during this thing. Or, like, how many hours of video boning will go down.”

Keith’s groan is tinged with slow laughter. His lips are tacky. He can see on the screen that there’s a dark purple wine stain clinging to the seam. “ _Video boning_? That sounds like a bad porno title from the seventies.”

“True,” Lance chuckles, “But!” He holds up one slender finger. “The question still stands!”

“What, how many people are fucking in isolation?”

“Not fucking. Fucking with _social distance_. _Remote_ fucking.” Lance pauses; flops onto his side in bed so one side of his hair gets caught under his face and forces one eye closed. “Oooo, do you think other features apply? Conference fucking?”

“Oh my _god_ Lance,” Keith groans, but adds all the same, “...fuck forwarding?”

“ _Fuck forwarding_!” The other eye slips closed with Lance’s mirth. “God, I like it when you’re funny.”

Keith snorts. “Yeah?”

Lance adjusts so he can open both eyes again. “Yeah.”

“Thanks,” Keith says, “I...thanks.” He clears his throat. “And...I guess a lot. To answer you. Probably a lot of remote fucking.”

Lance hums.

“Maybe not though,” Keith muses. “I’ve never done it. Maybe it’s really weird. Maybe everyone’s just watching mass amounts of porn.”

“It's not _that_ weird.”

“It’s gotta be pretty weird. Putting yourself on display like that?”

“It’s not on display if both people are doing it. It’s not like one person’s doing dishes and the other’s jerking off.”

“Hey, don’t kink shame.”

“What if kink shaming _is_ my kink?”

This time it’s Keith who closes his eyes with laughter. “I like it when _you’re_ funny.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

On screen, Lance shimmies onto his stomach with a grunt. Keith rolls up to lean against the wall, knees spread. The world seems to roll with him for just a second. “Have you?” Keith asks. “Remotely fucked, I mean?”

“Not live.”

Keith balks. “You _have_?”

“Not live.”

“ _On camera_?”

“Not live.”

“Stop that!”

Lance grins, but the wine’s taking a surprising amount of annoyance out of this. “You’ve never sent a nude? Or a clip?” he asks. Keith’s half shrug is answer enough, apparently. “Oh my god,” Lance laughs. “Oh my _god_. You’re a prude!”

Keith scoffs. “I'm not a prude.”

“You’re a _prude_! I bet you fuck like a church organist. One god, one position.”

“Hey!” Keith protests, but Lance is already on a roll.

“I bet you think doggy is adventurous. I bet you turn the lights off before you _kiss_.” He’s practically cackling.

The wine doesn’t quite dull the annoyance this time. “You have _no idea_ what I’m like, McClain.”

“I bet you use the word penis when you sext.”

“You think I don’t say cock when I sext?”

Lance’s laughter stutters over a gasp and trips into odd, garbled territory.

“You think there’s not a _reason_ I practice all those splits?”

“Uh–”

But now _Keith_ is already on a roll. “I’ve never sent a nude, but maybe that’s because I don’t need to. Maybe if I want to fuck a guy I don’t bother with pictures. Maybe you’re just a _tease_.”

The silence that follows is long and tenuous and sour and sweet. Somewhere along the way, here, something’s gone sideways.

“Maybe I am,” Lance murmurs.

Something’s gone _very_ sideways.

“Lance…?”

“I _am_ a tease…but so are you. A _prudish_ tease.”

“I’m not a prude,” Keith says, but it sounds less like a protest and more like a promise.

“No?”

There’s something about that ‘no’ that makes Keith bristle, and something about the way he bristles that makes his stomach clench, and suddenly sideways seems like an okay direction to go. “No,” he parrots, and slides his unoccupied hand up his own thigh. The movement isn’t overtly lewd yet, but the motion is obvious in the drag of his shoulder on camera. 

“Keith?” Lance sounds uncertain, now, and Keith worries that maybe he’s misreading this whole situation.

But even then, he has a _point_ to prove. “I’m not a prude,” he says, “And I’m not a tease, either.” He grabs himself through his pajama pants. He’s only half hard, but the context of the situation makes him gasp, anyway.

“Oh,” Lance says, then repeats, quieter, “Oh…”

Keith squeezes; stiffens more even as he blushes. Okay, point proven.

Now what?

The sound of Lance licking his lips is loud through the datapad. So is the rustle of the sheets as he shifts his hips against them.

“Tease,” Keith accuses.

Lance hesitates; nods; grinds his hips down again in a way that can’t be misconstrued.

Now _this_ , apparently.

Keith makes sure to exaggerate the movement of his shoulder as he works his hand into his pants to grab his cock properly. He can feel his heartbeat pulse through it into his palm. He copies Lance’s earlier sentiment: “Oh. Oh…”

On screen, Lance has started up a slow, almost shy rhythm. But he cants his hips up high with each thrust against his bed; high enough to show off the deep bend possible in his low back; high enough that Keith can see the curve of his ass peek over his head in the background.

Both of them keep their cameras on their faces, and that should feel safer. Keith’s not about to whip it out for Lance when they haven’t even…(Better not to think about that right now, it’ll spoil the mood.) But somehow their faces are so much more dangerous. Somehow the fact that the most salacious parts of what they’re doing are secondary makes everything more intimate. The most outrageous bits are out-of-focus and out-of-frame, so all they have to look at are each other’s expressions, and it’s _a lot_.

Only it’s not, really. They’re _faces_ —nothing new. Keith feels like he’s seen Lance’s face more than his own these last few days. But that means all that’s left to do is seek out the detail in the cracks of these new expressions they’ve never shown each other, and _that's_ a lot.

Lance parts his lips and Keith notices the tremble in the bottom one; the tension in his jaw as he sighs. His eyebrows draw together but his eyes stay so wide that Keith can almost see himself in the reflection of the datapad in them. Lance is blushing. It streaks across his nose and dusts over his cheekbones and clings to the entire shell of his ears.

Cute.

Lance sighs louder, and his nose wrinkles in the middle as if he can work the pink tinge away like an itch.

Fuck.

 _Cute_.

Keith tries not to look at his own tiny face in the corner of his screen. He wonders what detail Lance is picking up.

Does he catch it when Keith gasps in the wake of that sigh, tongue working its way between his molars so he can bite down and keep quiet-ish? Can he tell when Keith starts playing with the foreskin around his head, working his fingers in a way that makes his eyelids flutter at the end of every blink? Can he hear the little aborted noises in Keith’s throat? Can he make out his name in their rhythm?

Does he like it?

Lance’s grinding gets shallow and hard. He’s rocking so much his whole body is sliding up and down the bed. He’s planted his camera arm so his face moves toward it and away again, his pleasure caught in lockstep between shadow and over-exposition in the datapad’s blue light. He’s started making these little noises, too: quiet grunts and groans in time with his thrusts.

Keith definitely hears _his_ name in them.

He likes it.

He picks up the pace; laments the fact that he can’t use his other hand to cup his balls and get himself there faster. His orgasm builds from the navel outward; makes his hip joints hollow out and his legs start to shake. His arm loses its rhythm. He’s sick with how good it feels, how close he is, how hot this is, how hot _Lance_ is…

“Are you gonna come?”

It’s been so long since they used actual words that Lance’s almost startle Keith. And then his mind catches up to him and the low timbre of the question sinks in and he groans, “Yeah, _yeah_ , I’m close, I…”

“Please.”

It’s the ‘please’ that does it, and the way it comes out of Lance so breathy and desperate, like he’s begging to see it; like he _needs_ Keith’s pleasure in pursuit of his own. 

Keith comes into his pajama pants and all over his hand and sees the fucking _afterlife_ while he does it. He thrusts up into his fist all the way through and his hair flops into his face but he doesn’t care, he doesn’t _care_ , even as it sticks there with sweat and forces one eye closed. “Fuck,” he chokes (because usually he’s louder, but Adam and Shiro are _right next door_ ).

Lance’s breath comes harsh and high-pitched through the datapad. He’s practically rutting, now; an animal against the sheets, free hand white-knuckled in the pillow, teeth bared. He keeps his eyes open, though, and locked on the screen. “Close. _Close_ , but I _can’t_...”

Keith pulls his hand from his pants even as little aftershocks are still tugging at his stomach, and with no other option, uses his pinky to flick his hair out of his eye so he can open it again. He doesn’t really think about what he’s doing until Lance keens.

Even in the small preview window, the glint of the light against the come on his hand is obvious.

“That’s so,” Lance groans, “Keith, fuck, that’s…”

He grinds down three more times and then stills, eyes finally clamping shut, face pinched like he’s in _pain_. “Keith,” he gasps, and devolves into a series of pants and hums and moans, and _fuck_ , how the hell is Keith supposed to get off to any other thought ever again?

“Okay,” he concedes when it looks like Lance has caught some of his breath. “Maybe you’re not a total tease.”

Lance’s chuckle is quiet and airy. “You’re still a prude.”

Keith laughs despite himself. “Fine, you’re right. Complete prude.”

“Most prudish O-face I’ve ever seen.”

“I can’t believe I forgot to say Amen when I came.”

They succumb to a ridiculous fit of laughter, and then another that hits them for no reason just as the first starts to die down.

“Hey,” Keith says once they’ve calmed somewhat. “Is this going to be weird?”

Lance smiles. “Nah. We’ll just make sure not to be weird about it.”

Between the wine and the orgasm, Keith believes him.

It’s not going to be weird.

\------ ------ ------

So here’s the weird thing about it:

It’s not weird.

It’s _not_.

And not even not weird in an _okay-but-Lance-be-honest-was-it-weird-though-...-alright-maybe-a-little_ kind of way.

It’s just a thing, and it’s not weird, and _that’s_ fucking weird.

“Just guys bein’ dudes,” Lance had quipped, and they’d laughed about it, and Keith had countered with an easy, “Two bros jerkin’ on a vid call, twelve miles apart cuz they’re not gay,” and that had just led into Lance _losing his mind_ at Keith’s first Vine reference and…

They'd just...moved on.

So it’s not even the kind of ‘not weird’ where they can’t bring it up. It’s the kind of ‘not weird’ where they talk about it like it’s nothing; _joke_ about it.

Like it’s funny.

Because it kind of is, Lance guesses. Weeks prior the team had separated them for fear of double homicide, and now look at them: talking and tossing off like old pals. Shiro would be proud.

“I don’t know if ‘proud’ is the right word,” Keith intones. Lance scoffs with mock indignation, but it brings up a good point.

“What word _would_ he use, then?” he asks. “If he knew, I mean.”

“‘Shocked beyond all rhyme or reason’, probably.”

“That’s more than one word.”

Keith shrugs. “Use hyphens, then.”

“That doesn’t...god, never mind.”

Lance goes back to tapping on the patio door glass. The kittens are playing on the other side under the watchful eye of their mother.

“It would depend,” Keith says after a moment with only muffled mewling to cover the silence. “He’d use a different word. Depending.”

A kitten bats at his pointer finger and Lance coos. “Depending on what?”

“Well I mean...if I told him you and I were talking this much _and_ whipping one out together? Probably something like ‘fuck?!’.”

Lance’s laugh is so loud it scares the kitten back a half step. God, he’s still not used to how funny Keith can be in that dry, straightforward way of his.

“If I told him we were friends with remote benefits he’d be concerned. Or confused.”

Lance’s laughter peters out a little. “What about if you told him we were seeing each other?”

Keith hums. “Dumbfounded.”

“And...boyfriends?”

A beat.

Another.

“...argumentative.”

Lance’s stomach doesn’t drop the way the word itself makes it want to. Finally Lance feels like he can read Keith well enough to tell when he’s being obtuse on purpose. “‘Argumentative’?”

“You can’t be _boyfriends_ if you haven’t even _kissed yet_. Shiro would know that.”

“Oh.”

…

“Wait, okay, can we stop using the Shiro metaphor? I want to make sure I’ve got this right…”

“Lance,” Keith says, and he sounds unimpressed in a way that would have put Lance off before; would have stopped him from hearing the ensuing laughter and figuring out how to pick out the warmth in it. He’d been a _fool_ (although, at that...tell him something he doesn’t know).

“Excuse me for wanting a little clarity.” As if on cue, their feed bugs out; they’re both a series of neon pixels for a second before they writhe back into focus.

“Fair point.”

“So,” Lance draws out the vowel. “To clarify, we’re…?”

Keith frowns. “Pre-boyfriends?”

That’s…

Wait, what?

“Pre-boyfriends?”

If anything, Lance’s confusion just makes Keith look more sure. He nods at the screen. “Yeah. Pre-boyfriends.”

“So...when this is all over and I kiss you...then we’ll be, what, post-boyfriends?”

“No, I think that’d be marriage. Just boyfriends.”

Lance opens his mouth; pokes his tongue out one side; cocks his head. “Wouldn’t _engagement_ be post-boyfriends? Or...no, that would be pre-husbands…”

“I think this is an ‘all squares are rectangles, not all rectangles are squares’ situation.”

“Yeah...wait, _no_ , cuz…”

He gets so caught up arguing about whether all post-boyfriends are pre-husbands or not that Lance doesn’t realize until they’ve already ended the call:

He and Keith are _boyfriends_.

Or… _pre_ -boyfriends, anyway.

(He looks forward to taking care of _that_ little detail.)

It wasn’t even that _hard_.

Compared to everything else going on in the world, it’s downright _easy_.

How about that?

\------ ------ ------

When Lance picks up the call, he’s already on the street. Keith can’t tell where; the streetscape behind him is generic and, much like the sidewalk he’s trying to navigate himself, half-full of people eagerly pouring out in the wake of isolation. “Where are you?” Keith asks. “I’m already on my way, why didn’t you stay put?”

“It’s been _weeks_. I was _not_ spending another second in that apartment.”

“Yeah, but now we’re going to have to try to find each other.”

“We’ve done that under more difficult circumstances.”

Keith groans. “Oh _god_ , you’re going to be the worst kind of cheese ball. I’m calling this off, I changed my mind.”

“Oh, no you’re not.”

The audio on that last bit comes from two directions; hits him faintly a second before it filters through his datapad speakers. He looks up.

It’s only been weeks, but _god_ , it’s like Keith hasn’t seen Lance for years. Everything about him seems different, like the light refracts off him differently now that he’s Keith’s _boyfriend_.

Uh.

 _Pre_ -boyfriend.

Speaking of.

“Did you miss me, Mul–?”

Keith lets his lips answer for him; launches himself through the crowd and narrowly misses kneeing a kid in the face and kisses Lance the way he’s been thinking about for _weeks_. And Lance doesn’t hesitate; just throws his arms around Keith and digs his fingers into his jacket. “Best pandemic _ever_ ,” he murmurs when they pull back, and Keith agrees.

(At least, he does for a few years. Another one, milder, hits two weeks before their wedding day, and _that_ one, he thinks, ends up taking the cake. But that’s another story.)

**Author's Note:**

> You can really tell when I gave up the ghost on trying to keep Twitter threads reasonably sized, eh?


End file.
